3 Tear-Free Tips to cutting onions

Chopping onions! Yes, this is probably the most annoying part of cooking.Well, for me, and people like me. 😐 I mean, why do we forcefully have to tear up every time we want to cook. What’s even more annoying is that we can’t leave it out of the whole cooking process because it pretty much determines the final taste of the food. Most times, we all wish we could just purchase ready-chopped onions from the next door supermarket every time we need them to cook. But really and truly, nothing tastes better than freshly chopped vegetables.We need them to be as fresh as possible in order to get the right taste and nutrients out of them. So,out of frustration on a certain day 😐 , i went online and actually found out that a good number of people had tried different methods and came up with some tricks. However,out of the numerous tricks recommended by various people, here are the few tested and trusted tricks i personally recommend.Thank me later. 😉

Put your sunglasses on! – Yes, this sounds like a total joke. Wearing sunshades indoors is already a very questionable act :-|, now, chopping your onions while having them on just seems very insane, I know. Funny thing is, there are actually “onion goggles” selling on Amazon for about 4000-4500 naira. I’m not sure how many will go as far as purchasing one, but while you decide on that, for a substitute, putting on the regular fashion sunglasses is another option for a tear-free onion cutting process. It basically stops the irritating onion vapor from getting to the eyes. This thereby prevents the irritation that leads to tearing up.

Refrigerate onion – This is also another very effective method. This method works by peeling the onion skin and refrigerating for a few minutes(ideally 15 -20 minutes) before chopping. No form of discomfort will be felt while cutting because the cold basically inhibits the release of the eye-irritating chemicals, thereby making the whole cutting process tear-free.

Soak onion in water – This is another extremely simple and painless method which is done by peeling onion skin and soaking onion in water (cold) for about 15 -20 minutes. The theory behind this is that the water draws out all or most of the sulfuric compounds from the onion, thereby making the usual eye irritation non-existent.

All methods mentioned above are effective in their own way.But from experience, surprisingly, the “sunglasses method” is still the most preferable in the sense that the onion usually still retains its original taste,compared to the remaining two methods which normally have a slight effect on the intensity of the flavor of the onion due to the cooling and soaking.